Calvary Industries Develops In-House Control System

Calvary Industries saw a need for improved automated controls in washer and paint lines, and decided to create an in-house solution utilizing their own chemical engineers. The result is a customizable, automated control system called CalEye 2.0.

Tom Boland, national sales manager for Calvary Industries, says the decision to develop the system in-house was based on the chemistry.

“We felt the chemical processes are specialized enough that it could provide a lot more benefit to customers by having the people who understand the chemistry also involved in the system’s design and installation,” Boland says.

He says that typically, automation systems for pretreatment systems are done through third-party companies.

“We have taken this in-house, and really developed a system to mirror what our pretreatment product needs,” Boland says. “Our programming development team understands the chemistry involved, as opposed to control people trying to apply their controls knowledge to chemistry that they don’t fully understand.”

Calvary wanted to create a platform that would maintain consistency in systems, control product consumption, and monitor and control process parameters from a central location.

“The ability to tightly control a finishing operation, as it relates to the pretreatment system, is key to maintaining a high-performing process,” Boland says. “Keeping a pretreatment system in specification on a tighter level across a lot of different parameters affects quality.”

CalEye 2.0 is designed to provide comprehensive process management to increase washer and supervisory control, while improving performance and lowering costs. While there are various suppliers of individual sensors offering some level of integration, Boland says there has not been a comprehensive system.

“Our system monitors and controls the baths and washing systems, while also collecting data for quality purposes and documentation for ISO and other quality systems,” he says.

The system includes a modular process control center that can monitor, control and record various parameters, and provide historical data so that customers can quickly evaluate what’s going on with the pretreatment system.

“The CalEye 2.0 dashboard provides an overview of what is happening in each stage of the washer,” Boland says. “It provides real-time monitoring of process parameters, automatically maintains those parameters, and stores all collected data for exportable trend logs.”

According to the company, the system is also adaptable for many functions. Because it is designed in-house, it is more easily customizable to the end-user’s pretreatment system.

“Any parameter the customer wants to measure that can be sent with an industrial sensor can be installed and tied into the dashboard to give the customer control over it,” Boland says. “The dashboard only reflects the capability behind it and we are developing additional features with each installation.”